


In balance with this life, this death

by SteveTrevorsStarship



Series: I dreamed the snow was you, when there was snow [2]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Afghanistan war, Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Greek gods, It Gets Better, Sort Of, Steve Trevor Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 11:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17724521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteveTrevorsStarship/pseuds/SteveTrevorsStarship
Summary: Diana still sees ghosts.But the ghost of Steve Trevor never comes back to haunt her again.





	In balance with this life, this death

_I know that I shall meet my fate_

_Somewhere among the clouds above_

_Those that I fight I do not hate_

_Those that I guard I do not love_

_No likely end could bring them loss_

_Or leave them happier than before_

///

Diana sees ghosts.

Not in the same way that Charlie did; not as bloody, not as cruel. Her’s are more of a peaceful sort- they stay long enough to bring a smile to her face, and disappear quickly enough to make her heart ache.

She sees Sameer on stage at the end of a play, bowing and throwing her a smile before disappearing from existence. Charlie, at every pub she went to. She sees him raise a glass to her and then down it in seconds. He laughs and sings, until the music fades into the background and he is just _gone._ Etta is there, too, during every step forward for women, giving her a big grin and laughing. She'd always say, just like when she was alive, “It's a work in progress. The men and their prides, that is.”

And on the quiet mornings, where the sun filters in through the window and onto the table where she makes herself breakfast for one, she sees Steve. He talks to her and talks to her, and he makes her laugh and then cry because _he's not real, he's not real._ He gives her a sad smile and then says “I love you,” only to disappear before she can respond. He comes back every time the snow falls, every time Diana is stuck in a difficult situation at work, every time she has to deal with a sleazy man.

He's there at the end of every victory, reminding her that there's a cost.

Diana thinks his face and voice should be gone from her memory, especially after so many years. She hadn't had enough time to memorize those eyes, blue and startlingly beautiful, and his smile, however rare it was. She’d never thought to commit it to memory when he was whispering sweet nothings into her ear that night in Veld, or even when he was growing frustrated with her, the tick in his jaw becoming more visible by the second. Yet, every time she sees him, he's as clear as the skies surrounding Themyscira; he’s clearer than Etta, Sameer, and Charlie, even when she'd had a lifetime to memorize their faces. He seems real more often than not and _that's_ what breaks Diana for decades, what breaks her more than seeing Sameer, Etta, and Charlie. She feels as though she could reach for his hand and rub her thumb against it, smiling at him like they're a normal couple, but they're _not_ and they never will be. He's dead and a figment of her imagination and _she still loves him._

It takes her 15 years after he dies the second time to finally ask.

She was sitting at the table on a snowy December in 1999, contemplating Y2K and what will come with it. The humans find it terrifying, the fact that a day is going to pass and the date will change and a new era will begin. Diana finds their attention to the passage of time amusing, and tells Steve this as she eats her breakfast.

He laughs. “I remember when the 1900’s came around. I was still young- 17, I think. Thought it would be a good idea to get myself a girl.” Diana chuckles as her turns his eyes to hers, mirth dancing along his laughter lines. “It was a bad idea. She ended up being the pastor's daughter, I never went to that church again. My parents kept going, though, to the day they died. Thought it was honorable the pastor chased their son out of his backyard with a shotgun. ”

Diana shakes her head, her hair falling loose from her half-hearted braid. “I suppose the morale of this story is that humans do stupid things when it comes to time?” It's meant to be a jest, but the way his smile fades from bright to soft shows he took it to heart.

“Not always,” he says, his voice low and quiet. He looks at her with a sort of reverence that Diana is sure that her mind couldn't have possibly concocted on its own. It's either a distant memory from Veld or--

“Are you real?” the words fall out of her mouth in a jumble, so quickly and so without thought that she's not even sure she said them.

Steve looks at her for a long moment. He looks contemplative, his blue eyes a piercing hers with their gaze. Diana stops breathing in that moment, staring back with the full intensity of _want_ that’s bursting in her veins-- wanting him to be alive again, to touch him again, to love a living, breathing man. 

And when he speaks, all he says is, “I'm sorry.” His voice is rough and broken, and his orbs shine even brighter with tears.

Diana remembers to breathe again when a sob breaks free from her chest and Steve watches as she cries, hands clasped in her lap, breakfast entirely forgotten.

She stays that way for a while, until she sees him stand from her peripheral, sees him walk over to her with purpose. She looks up at him, surprised, as he reaches toward her face and cradles her chin with his hand.

And she feels it- _she feels it._ It's feather light and could be mistaken for the breeze passing through the window, but Diana knows that warmth can't be found outside during December. It can only be found with him, in his arms, in the middle of a snowy night in a soon to be forgotten town in Belgium, during a war that was _supposed to be the end_ (and for one of them, it was.)

She feels it, and she feels her heart shatter to pieces as he tells her, “I love you,” and then he disappears, leaving behind only the ghost of his smile.

Diana still sees ghosts.

But the ghost of Steve Trevor never comes back to haunt her again.

///

_Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,_

_Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,_

_A lonely impulse of delight_

_Drove to this tumult in the clouds_

///

Steve collapses when he's back in that horrid place-- _Elysium,_ they call it. He falls onto his knees. His energy is spent, as it always is. Every time he sees her, every time he escapes this ridiculously pampered place for just a few minutes of sad, lovely heartbreak.

 _It's better than acting like I belong here,_ he thinks, looking around at the detached souls, their faces bright and happy as they celebrate life, death, and everything in between. They're all heroes- some recognizable, some not. From historians to philosophers to soldiers to presidents, they're all there, drafting and wandering from place to place.

Steve is, too.

He never thought he deserved heaven, and never even considered the Greek equivalent for heroes. There'd always been too many kills, too many boys dead next to him in the trenches, too many of the men he called brothers blown up in explosions they caused.

The only reason he's here is because he blew himself up to save the armistice. As someone who never liked the idea of karma, of divine intervention, whatever you call it, it made him uncomfortable. He did what he did and that was that- and if he managed to get himself killed doing it, that didn’t mean he was any more a hero than the other men that fought alongside him.

“Steve Trevor,” a strict voice calls from behind, “you need not torture yourself every time the opportunity presents itself.” Steve sighs and stands up again, turning towards the voice. His legs are like jelly and he's dead tired, but he still manages to level the gaze of the woman across from him. Her eyes are grey-blue and her blonde braid drops down on her back, longer than Diana's.

Steve has no answer for her, for why he hurts himself with seeing her again and again, why he hurts _her_.

“I give her false hope,” he says, his voice low and words cynical. “I should stop.”

“Will you?”

He remains silent.

“It's cruel,” Antiope says in response to his silence.

“What, the fact I go back to her?”

“No. The fact they give you a choice.”

Steve knows. _You can see her again,_ Hades had said. _More time, but only if you choose._ An offer he gave to everyone in Elysium, apparently.

An offer Steve regrets every time he takes it, because goodbyes are always the worst part and that's all they can seem to get in their time together. But every time he goes back, he gets to see her smile, gets to hear her laugh, however short-lived it may be.

This time, though…

_Are you real?_

He didn't want to fill her with false hopes that he would come back alive and be able to love her again. She’d already spent _decades_ mourning him and he hated that as it was.

This time was the last time.

“You loved her,” Antiope says, looking at him with a hint of wistfulness in her eyes.

“Love,” Steve corrects the tense absentmindedly, before wincing as he realizes what he said.

“Dead men cannot love,” Antiope says kindly. She is a warrior, but Steve can see the kindness and sisterhood in her. She is an Amazon, after all.

They fall into another silence and Steve sits on a bench, contemplating the land before him.

Antiope told him, when he first met her, that each soul in Elysium sees a different setting. She said it was often an important memory for the soul, and for the first few decades or so Steve saw the streets of London. He still does, sometimes, but for some reason, after he came back from death in ‘84 and then promptly died again, the memories are different. They're things he's never seen before: typically an unfamiliar farm, with horses and other animals he hasn’t seen in years, even before he died. Other times it’s a school, with a sign in front of it that says in bold white lettering _Buckeye Elementary_ _and Junior High._

Today, though, white grave markers stand in front of him, in the mass. They’re familiar, but still there’s more grave markers here than he’s used to.

“What do you see today?” Antiope asks. It’s a common enough question between them, almost akin to commenting on the weather.

“I think it’s Arlington. It’s a Cemetery for fallen soldiers and the like.”

“Isn’t that a good sign? It being somewhere you recognize?”

“I’ve never been there before,” Steve replies, running his hand through his already-tousled hair.

Antiope only misses a beat before asking, “Perhaps you were buried there?”

“I would have been court martialed for disobeying direct orders and crossing the border during a potential armistice. Neither the Brits or Americans would bother with honoring me. And there was no body left to bury, anyway.” Antiope gives him a look of thinly-veiled surprise. She doesn’t know how he died (he’d rather not talk about it, the burning sensation and the feeling of having his insides blown out before complete darkness) and he’d like to keep it that way.

“Your superiors are cowardly,” is all she says. Steve chuckles humorlessly.

“Politics were war before war was war.”

Antiope raises her eyebrow at him. “Not in my experience.”

“Which comes first: the fight or the argument?”

She hesitates. “The argument.”

Steve nods and says in a very Etta-like fashion, “I digress.”

“You’re wise for a man,” she says with perhaps a hint of respect. Steve laughs at her. It’s the first time in 67 years he’s won an argument against her, and yes, he keeps count. The first and last time he won an argument against her was over the necessity of men (“Yeah, but we have sperm. Not even Diana can argue with that.” Of course, the argument only ends because Steve is laughing so hard and Antiope just frowns at him but he still takes it as a win.)

“There’s a difference between wise and world-weary.”

“Enough with your anecdotes,” Antiope scowls and Steve laughs harder (she’s a lot like Diana, minus the innocence and the beauty, but he doesn’t quite think he’ll be able to call any other woman beautiful after Diana). “What do you think it means?” she asks when Steve calms down.

“The cemetery? I don’t know. You know more about Greek myth and the Afterlife than I do.”

Antiope merely grunts at the statement. “Perhaps reincarnation.” Steve snorts. Antiope raises her eyebrow at him.

He blinks. “Oh, you were being serious.” Antiope shakes her head and turns away from him.

The silence falls again. Antiope stands, looking over her own memories as Steve looks at Arlington. He winces as a soul steps on top of a grave, unaware of where he is in Steve’s mind.

“What memory are you seeing?” he asks, already knowing the answer. He’s asked it before-- and she’s had the same answer every time.

“Themyscira.”

Steve diverts his eyes back to the cemetery and narrows his eyes when he sees one of the grave markers. He stands and walks to it, reading it carefully.

**_Samuel K Trevor_**

**_CPT_ **

**_US Army_ **

**_Jan 13 1978_ **

**_Nov 11 2002_ **

**_Operation Enduring Freedom_ **

**_Loving husband, father, son, and brother._ **

At first, Steve thinks it’s a fluke. Just another person with the last name Trevor-- it’s common enough. And then he turns around.

The man standing a few feet away from him has brown hair and brown eyes that look at him like he recognizes him, which is odd, because Steve’s never seen him in his life.

“Steve?” he asks, and Steve reaches for his gun because this situation is just _weird_ and then he realizes that he doesn’t have a gun and it doesn’t even matter because he’s already _dead._

“How do you know my name?” Steve says instead, his jaw clenching.

“I’m your brother,” he says incredulously. His laughs a bit hysterically, like he can’t quite believe it. “Why do you not… You- when did you get so old, kid?”

“I’m not your brother.”

“You- you look just like him.”

“What year is it?”

“2002… why--?” His eyes are wide and Steve almost pities the guy. _Almost._ He’s spent too much time in this god-forsaken place to care much about it.

“I was born in 1883.” He says, cutting straight to the chase, “Are you aware you’re dead?”

For the longest moment, the man in front of him doesn’t blink. He doesn’t breathe, which doesn’t affect him because he doesn’t need to; breathing is a force of habit in the realm of the dead. _In, out, in, out, in--_

“The humvee,” he finally says, letting out a breath that he shouldn’t have (doesn’t have.) Steve doesn’t know what a humvee is, but he knows that look in his eyes, the look that says, _I don’t think there’s even a body left to bury._

(Steve thinks otherwise, with the grave sitting in front of him. He knows that when there’s no body, there’s false hope-- hope that they’re alive, _that they got it wrong, they’re alive, they’re alive_ so they don’t bury an empty casket, just keep hoping and hoping until they can’t anymore.)

He avoids eye contact with Steve. “Is this place heaven?”

Steve laughs. It’s a horrid, bitter thing. “Far from it. Welcome to Elysium. What’s your name?”

“Sam,” the man responds, holding a hand out to Steve to shake, “Sam Trevor.”

“Well Sam, the first thing you have to learn about Elysium: we can’t touch each other. We’re souls.”

///

_I balanced all, brought all to mind,_

_The years to come seemed waste of breath_

///

Steve thinks Antiope might be right about that reincarnation thing.

(And when Hades comes to Steve years later and tells him _Zeus has a plan for you_ Steve finally knows for sure that was he right. He sees Antiope, giving him a slight smile. _Take care of her,_ she says. He only has time to smile back before he disappears and wakes up in a world full of war, lights, technology, and _Diana._ )

///

_A waste of breath the years behind_

_In balance with this life, this death._

**Author's Note:**

> Part 2 of this series and I promise more will come. The Trevor family is a bunch of badass soldiers and nobody can deny me that right, thank you. 
> 
> Arlington Cemetery was first used as a national cemetery in the 1800's, though the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier wasn't made until the 1921. 
> 
> Operation Enduring Freedom was the codename for the Afghan war, which began in October 2001. 
> 
> The title and poem in the story are "An Irish Airman foresees his Death" by William Yeats, made in 1918.
> 
> Elysium, in Greek myth, was the place where heroes or those who lived righteous lives were sent.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
